🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

https://fed.interfree.ca/@fastfinge

completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ

xmpp: fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ

Public Key

npub135l6uh44jceahu3mgezfma84ug63qxlrdaz0gsq245w9mmuv3yxsz88k0s

NIP-05 Address

fastfinge_at_fed.interfree.ca@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsg60awt66evv7m7ga5v3ya7n67ydgsr03k7385gq9268zaa7xgjrgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsazerr2

Publishing to

saltivka.org

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub135l6uh44jceahu3mgezfma84ug63qxlrdaz0gsq245w9mmuv3yxsz88k0s

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Last Notes

2026-06-01 14:12:48 UTC

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I’ll wait for a test flight beta, I think. Sadly as part of my job I’ll be running the new IOS beta; an IOS beta plus alpha software might be too adventurous for my phone haha

2026-06-01 14:02:14 UTC

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If you need beta testers let me know. Happy to help. Fueled by how much I hate discord lol

2026-06-01 13:37:42 UTC

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No. I mean that when I am in a chat, and a new message arrives, voiceover gives no indication of this. Ideally, if I’m sitting in a chat with my phone unlocked, waiting for the other person to answer, voiceover should just automatically announce the new message when it arrives. Or at the least, have a vibration, play a sound, or some other haptic. At the moment I have to just swipe left and right over and over, checking to see if the new message has come yet. Also, on that screen, the “lock” button for voiceover is labeled “744 locked received”. This is confusing, and I’m not certain what the number is for or what it’s trying to tell me. These are literally the only two accessibility issues I can find in the app.

2026-06-01 13:00:16 UTC

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Monal on iOS is almost perfect. The only issue is it doesn’t read new messages when they arrive so you have to swipe to find them. On windows Miranda IM is perfect once you configure it to use the blind friendly contact list and standard windows notifications.

2026-06-01 01:08:45 UTC

If you want to communicate with your Hermes Agent via #XMPP, here's a plugin for that. Code is extracted from three different PR's to the hermes agent github repo to add XMPP that weren't being merged, and moved into a plugin. I just cherry picked and packaged everything with the help of local models running on my laptop, with a final pass by a cloud model (if you read the readme carefully you can tell what cloud model) to update documentation and fix a few loose ends the smaller (but free and more environmentally friendly) local models left. Everything I could test is working. Unfortunately I don't have an XMPP client that supports reactions, typing indicators, threads, or voice messages. But it connects to the server via a secure connection, and both versions of omemo work. However you feel about #AI, communication should at least be E2E encrypted and not controlled by discord/telegram. https://github.com/fastfinge/hermes-xmpp-plugin

2025-12-04 17:03:50 UTC

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This has been my frustration with fedi for a while. The majority of us, and I include myself in this, are tech nerds. And tech nerds are historically not good at communicating with non-tech-nerds. But social media is all about communicating! I think this is the primary reason fedi struggles to grow. We make it seem harder than it is, and we kind of blow off people who want to have conversations about things not related to our specific interests. See the way folks interested in sports get treated around here: mostly, they get yelled at and told they shouldn't like sports at all because it's corporate or bad for the environment or politically distasteful. Anyway, let's talk some more about the 47 hard drives I just purchased for my 12th server.

2025-12-03 03:53:45 UTC

Huh. Just chatted in person with someone who's been on #mastodon for a while, now, who honestly thought that all the Mastodon domains were run by Mastodon. And having a different domain was, like, just a vanity thing to look cool. It only came up because they were complaining about an issue they were having, and they were on a smaller server (not naming it for anonymity), so I suggested contacting their server admin about the problem. I was surprised when they answered "Dude nobody at big companies reads those reports. It just all goes to AI or whatever." It took some actual convincing to get them to believe that the server they're on does, in fact, have a living breathing human admin who can be talked to.
Anyway, folks, support your #fediverse server admins and moderators. With money, where you can. They're almost certainly getting messages from users who think that reporting things to an admin here is exactly like reporting stuff to Facebook or Google. IE: screaming at a giant faceless entity who's never going to care or do anything about whatever your problem is.

2025-11-26 03:02:09 UTC

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My suggestion would be to keep it simple. If the reason you posted the photo was because it was a pretty flower, well...that's fine for the alt-text. No matter how many words you use, you might not be able to communicate the exact feeling of beauty you experienced. If you could, you'd be a writer, not a photographer. Ask yourself why you posted, and what you want someone to take away from it. If you want them to notice the colour, or the size, or whatever, those are what goes in the alt text.

2025-11-26 02:39:32 UTC

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So as an actual blind user who uses AI regularly...no, not really. If you include AI generated alt-text, the odds are you're not checking it for accuracy. But I might not know that, so I assume the alt-text is more accurate than it is. If you don't use any alt-text at all, I'll use my own AI tools built-in to my screen reader to generate it myself if I care, and I know exactly how accurate or trustworthy those tools may or may not be. This has a few advantages:
1. I'm not just shoving images into Chat GPT or some other enormous LLM. I tend to start with deepseek-ocr, a 3b (3 billion parameter) model. If that turns out not to be useful because the image isn't text, I move up to one of the 90b llama models. For comparison, chat GPT and Google's LLM's are all 3 trillion parameters or larger. A model specializing in describing images can run on a single video card in a consumer PC. There is no reason to use a giant data center for this task.
2. The AI alt text is only generated if a blind person encounters your image, and cares enough about it to bother. If you're generating AI alt text yourself, and not bothering to check or edit it at all, you're just wasting resources on something that nobody may even read.
3. I have prompts that I've fiddled with over time to get me the most accurate AI descriptions these things can generate. If you're just throwing images at chat GPT, what it's writing is probably not accurate anyway.
If you as a creator are providing alt text, you're making the implicit promise that it's accurate, and that it attempts to communicate what you meant by posting the image. If you cannot, or don't want to, make that promise to your blind readers, don't bother just using AI. We can use AI ourselves, thanks. Though it's worth noting that if you're an artist and don't want your image tossed into the AI machine by a blind reader, you'd better be providing alt text. Because if you didn't, and I need or want to understand the image, into the AI it goes.

2025-11-15 20:09:09 UTC

#fediverse question: Has anyone written a Bridge between #lemmy, #piefed, #mbin, #kbin, or other fediverse software and #nntp? I have #usenet access, and would be happy to bridge some of the various blindness groups on Usenet onto the fediverse.

2025-10-22 02:49:29 UTC

What's up with my #reading habits lately?
Me: "I'd really like some #fantasy or #scifi comfort food. Nothing complex; maybe something cozy or slice of life, or a power fantasy where the good guys always win. I'd love that."
Me, a few hours later: "Hey! This #book was just a predictable power fantasy where the good guys always win! It was overly simple slice of life, and the conflict was low stakes. I hated that!"
It's gotten to the point where I haven't rated the last few #books I've read, because "2 stars: was exactly what I asked for!" just seems like an unfair review.
Anyway, authors: please figure out what I actually want to read and write that, then advertise it to me as what I think I want to read. Because book marketing isn't hard enough for you, right? Thanks! #bookstodon

2025-07-06 03:12:08 UTC

That feeling when I write documentation for something, then find the documentation I forgot I wrote for the same thing two years ago, and the wording and structure are almost identical. Right down to the same silly jokes. Then while editing I noticed a mistake I made in this version, and the *exact same* mistake was in what I wrote two years ago. Am I just an #llm that's made out of meat? Never mind anyone else: will I even realize when I replace myself with an #AI? Maybe it's already happened...

2025-03-16 02:56:56 UTC

Ah, yes. The joys of asking an #AI a simple #NodeJS question, but forgetting I'd changed the temperature settings for some work I was doing earlier.
Me: "How do I set up something like python's venv for NodeJS?"
deepseek R1 (after about 30 seconds of increasingly unhinged reasoning): "You can't do that fuckwit."
No further context. Well, okay then! I can't wait until budget cuts replace nurses and doctors with AI; I'm sure that's gonna go just fine.

2025-02-06 16:58:02 UTC

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Thanks for the help, everyone! #NFS is the way to go, and a lot simpler than I thought. For anyone discovering this later, the guide I'm using is this one: https://github.com/zilexa/Homeserver/tree/master/Filesystems-guide/networkshares_HowTo-NFSv4.2 Credits to everyone for the suggestions, ideas, and assurance that this isn't going to be as hard as I thought it would be: @npub155p…8cg6, @npub1fne…87ll, @npub1940…uh9v, @npub13nc…hcle, @modulux@node.isonomia.net,

2025-02-06 16:32:02 UTC

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Thanks! I'll have to read through the options carefully, because I also want to know what happens if the network connection goes down for some reason. Does it silently unmount and then the ram server starts writing to its local disc and filling it up? Or do writes fail? Or do they get cached? Or what? What happens when I fix the network connection? Does it remount? Or stay broken? Or sync some cache somewhere? I now understand how this works with rclone and I don't like it LOL.

2025-02-06 16:26:26 UTC

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Oh, got it! For some reason the nfs documentation makes that look more complicated.

2025-02-06 16:23:23 UTC

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So I guess the first thing I need to do is guarantee the users and groups on both machines are identical for NFS, right? Because unlike SFTP I'm not logging in as some particular user.

2025-02-06 16:16:05 UTC

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One server has all the storage, and the other has all the cpu and ram. The first server is just packed with 20 tb spinning discs, and enough cpu and ram to serve files.

2025-02-06 16:04:18 UTC

Hey #linux #debian people: it’s occurring to me that #rclone might not actually be the best way to do what I’m doing. So: if you had two Debian servers on a vpn, both with 1 gig fiber links to the internet, in cities 100 km apart, how would you go about having shared filesystems between them? Right now I am using rclone mount with sftp. Is there a less janky way?

2025-01-31 13:38:46 UTC

I haven't posted a #fedidreams for a while. So here's one. Last night I dreamed I wrote a book called Silly Chilly Billy, in which Billy gets a croak in his throat 'cuz he wouldn't wear a coat, but smarter Carter wore his garters. However, the book launch was being protested because apparently the book contributed to the feminization of boys by suggesting that they might need to wear coats when it's cold outside. The book lead to all books by people with disabilities being banned, because true men aren't disabled, and so all books by the disabled are homosexual propaganda. I was then required to publicly apologize for attacking masculinity, and admit that coats are a crutch for the inferior. As people booed and threw things at me, I woke up.

2025-01-25 23:37:37 UTC

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All of them suck, honestly. Debian sucks the least because of preseed, but that only works because I've been running Linux servers for 20 years, have another computer to create the preseed file on and make the custom ISO, and know *exactly* what I need the installer to do. No normal blind human could recover from any type of failure on a Linux system at all, assuming they could even get it installed. There are ways of getting arch and Ubuntu to come up on the live image with sound and speech, but they involve precise timing, memorizing keypresses, and typing commands into the console by wrote.

2025-01-25 23:27:15 UTC

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No, because to boot from that live USB stick, you need to get into the BIOS. If you're blind, you can neither access the boot menu or change boot priority. Reinstalling involves unplugging your system drive, plugging in a USB drive with the installer, getting it to boot off that when it can't find anything else bootable, then plugging in the boot drive again. And the installer offers a screen reader, but it doesn't offer any sound drivers, so the screen reader is not useful. No live Linux images have working sound and a screen reader. I have a installer with a preseed file that I created so it won't ask me any questions, assuming I can time it exactly correct to get it to boot off the USB stick and then plug in the actual drive I want the OS installed on before it starts writing data.

2025-01-25 23:18:46 UTC

Even completely headless, command line #linux doesn't prioritize #accessibility in any way. Today I had to reinstall an entire #debian system from scratch because a drive listed in my /etc/fstab died. That makes #systemd boot into emergency mode, where you get no SSH, no network, no sound, and no screen reader. There is no quick way to force it to try and boot even though drive 7 of 11 has died, and it could absolutely bring up SSH and the network to let me fix it if it wanted to, just like sysvinit used to do. You can't even force systemd to add SSH and the network to emergency mode because of circular dependencies. nofail will only continue the boot if the drive doesn't exist, but if the filesystem has issues...emergency mode for you. In short: if your drive dies on Linux, fuck you. Be able to see, or reinstall your entire system, because nobody in Linuxland gives a shit about #a11y or your needs.

2025-01-19 19:36:40 UTC

So as I went for a walk this morning, I was musing on my switch to Kagi, and hosting my own bookmark manager, and Mastodon, and so-on. One of the key things that make these services better, I think, is that they rely on intentional user signals. Three quarters of the websites I visit are totally unimportant. Most of the YouTube videos I view turned out to be neutral to bad, and I don't want to keep seeing more of them. Half the products I look at I have no intention of purchasing. But big tech slurps up all this low quality data and throws it into a big data soup. However: garbage in, garbage out, right? I think hyper-personalization isn't the exclusive domain of big tech. In fact, without big data, I think we can do it better. Because we're relying on explicit decisions that users made, with the intention of effecting their experience. So it's less data, but the quality is a hundred times higher. For example, I would love a fediverse client that can determine the posts that are most similar to posts I previously boosted, and let me choose to sort those to the top. I follow a few hundred active posters, and there's no way I can keep up with all of you. I know I'm missing super cool stuff. But to surface the cool stuff, we don't need big tech and data from millions of users. We just need to make better use of the personal data we already have about ourselves.

2024-11-08 14:29:22 UTC

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Also, the #AI #bots have more rights than us #blind humans. Blind folks had to fight for years and years for copyright exemptions that would allow us to access and read books. The AI bots are just allowed to read as many books as they want, and swallow entire libraries whole. Yup; I'd definatly be better off as a bot.

2024-11-08 14:21:02 UTC

I wish I was a #bot, not a #human. Whenever I get a #captcha, the #AI bots can all solve it just fine. I, being a #blind human, cannot.

2024-11-06 21:58:16 UTC

If your #blind, #signal does nothing to protect your #privacy. They use #hcaptcha, so if you can’t see the images, you have to enable cross site cookies and give them a valid email. And if you want to contact signal about it, sending your device info via unencrypted email is the only way. This is not how privacy or #security work. You’re better off with iMessage. Or even watsapp! At least they don’t hand your data over to a third party captcha provider. Or send your device info via unencrypted email. #infosec #a11y #accessibility

2024-11-03 01:00:09 UTC

Just watched Late Night with The Devil. I'm not a big #horror guy, but just after Halloween, while recovering from flu and covid shots, seemed a good night to take in a horror #film. The #audiodescription was excellent. And the #movie itself was one of those rare, excellent films that doesn't rely on violence and blood for its terrors. And only one jump scare. It doesn't do much with surround sound, as it's mostly filmed as though it were a 70's live talk show. Also large portions of it are in black and white. But if those things don't put you off, I strongly recommend it. It's the first movie that's managed to keep me awake and attentive in months.

2024-10-31 02:10:20 UTC

**My first thought**
man, we're so spoiled on Mastodon. There are like four #accessible web apps, multiple accessible IOS and Android apps, at least two accessible Windows apps (even if they both have some issues), and a couple accessible mac apps. As #screenreader users we can actually choose the one we like, rather than picking the one where the largest number of features actually work with a screen reader.
**My Second Thought**
Man, this should just be the default state of existence. #Blind folks need to demand more. But I get it, it's so easy to just accept the current state of accessibility as normal, and then be surprised by things that actually work.

2024-10-26 12:06:49 UTC

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That’d be why. ChatGPT is too slow and pricy for screen readers to use regularly. In fact, both Apple and Firefox use on device AI to generate missing alt text in the browser for screen readers.

2024-10-26 11:57:12 UTC

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What model are you using? Alt text generation in edge and chrome use an extremely small one because they generate alt text for every image on a page in realtime as it loads.

2024-10-25 15:39:15 UTC

So here's a perfect example of the issues with #AI #AltText. Yes, it's usually better than nothing. But here's a case where it isn't: I have Microsoft Edge set up to give me automatic alt text when it's missing. The alt-text it gave for a profile image reads "Appears to be: Taika Waititi." My first thought is: Huh? Who? I have no idea who this is, and the profile in question is for someone named Laura, so it's deeply unlikely to be Taika Waititi, whomever they may be. So now I'm left with the incorrect name of someone (hopefully a public figure?) I don't know, and no information about anything actually in the image. AI can't understand that I've never heard of Taika Waititi, that the name *directly underneath* the image reads "Laura", that the image is a profile picture, and put all these things together to generate contextually correct alt-text. #a11y #accessibility

2024-10-04 21:25:54 UTC

If you're reading this, please #boost so I can get back to being federated with the #fediverse. Unfortunately, the data center I've been hosting with for years and years encountered some serious issues. I had to move suddenly, losing almost everything. I took the chance to change the software I use. But I've still lost all of my followers, all of my federation, etc! It's also taken down rblind.com, my passion project to get more #blind folks off #reddit. I'll be bringing that back over the coming days. In the meantime, hi! I'm a blind guy who uses the #NVDA #screenreader, loves #accessibility and works in the field, and reads tons of #fanfic, #litrpg, and #sciencefiction and #fantasy in my spare time. Nice to meet you!